Resource 8-12

God’s Love Undoes What Sin Destroyed—

Romans 5

The problem with the good news of salvation is that most Christians have heard it so
often that we seem to treat it as if it were non-news, as if it were passé, or even as if
it were not true. But try to hear the Good News again as if you were hearing it for the
very first time. Let it roll around inside your head for a while. Let its truth soak in. This
is incredible news—too good to be true. And yet it is true. God’s love is forever, and
the hope it inspires in our hearts will never disappoint us.

The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself—that it begins and
ends with faith. As the Scripture says, “But those who are right with God will live by
trusting in him” (Rom 1:17, NCV).

Even here, true to life, the apostle begins in Romans 1:18—3:20 with bad news. All
people, pagan and religious alike, are responsible sinners, doomed to death. We all
know better than to live as we do. It is not merely that we have messed up royally!
We have wronged the King of Kings.

But here’s the Good News: the God, who could justly destroy us, has decided to spare
us instead. And yet, he will not save anyone by coercion. We must cooperate with his
loving intentions for us, if we are to enjoy the benefits of this Good News.

The Bible teaches that the death of Christ is the basis for our justification. But
“justification” has become a technical theological term that sometimes seems to
mystify even seasoned Christians. For Paul’s Roman readers, it was a perfectly
ordinary, everyday, secular word.

Perhaps we can recapture the simplicity of the word if we will quit thinking about
biblical theology and think about computer word processors. Those of us who have
used these sometimes frustrating conveniences know about fully justified margins—
that’s when the type is lined up evenly on both sides of the page.

A justified paragraph has its right and left margins straight, perfectly in line. Even so,
a justified person is one whose life is brought in line with God’s purposes for human
beings. To be justified is to be put right with God, to have our sins forgiven.

Of course, Paul’s first readers did not think of computers, but of the Roman legal
system. For them a justified person was one who had been acquitted before the law.
Not merely declared innocent, but innocent. All charges were dropped against him or
her. His or her criminal record was expunged. He or she was set free.

And so it is for us—because of what Christ has done and because we trust in him
alone for salvation. We were all hopeless sinners. Guilty as charged of capital crimes.
But God, our merciful Judge, chose to go easy on us.

Let us not mistakenly imagine that our sins simply disappeared into nothingness,
thanks to God’s forgiveness. The victim of a forgiven murderer is not resurrected
simply because the murderer repents of the crime. Likewise, when we sin, the damage

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is done. When God forgives our huge “debt” of sins, the debt does not magically
vanish. God assumes the “debt” himself. He takes the loss.

Just also with our salvation. We live, because he died. The last verse of Romans 4
provides the necessary context for our text. “Because of our sins [Christ] was given
over to die, and he was raised to life in order to put us right with God” (v 23, TEV).
God chose to suffer the consequences for our sins himself—dying in the person of his
only Son so that we might live. But God the Father raised Christ from the dead so that
we might have a right relationship with him. Precisely how Christ’s death provides
human salvation remains a mystery.

Propitiation? The theological term “propitiation” seems to convey the mistaken notion
that God needed to vent his anger in order to deal graciously with guilty sinners. Sin
deserves death, and sinners have to die to satisfy God’s justice; so the explanation
goes. But Jesus stepped forward, “Father, don’t kill them. Kill me instead!” And God
did. So now, his justice satisfied and his anger relieved, God can deal graciously with
us. What a vicious view of God! No! God did not spare himself by choosing an innocent
victim to take our punishment. He took the loss himself. He suffered our death
himself, so that we might live.

Expiation? Likewise, the term “expiation” may convey a mistaken understanding of

Christ’s atoning death. Some theologians suggest that sinners are justified by God’s
decision to play a trick on himself. We remain incurable sinners, but he chooses to
look on us through the righteousness of Christ. And so, though we remain soiled with
sin, he sees us spotless in his innocent Son. What nonsense! Justification does not
mean that God treats us as if we are right with him, although we really are not. God
actually makes us right!

Romans 5:1-11 is not about how we are put right with God. It is about the
consequences of justification. When we are right with God, there are consequences. In
our text, Paul lists three.

Peace: First, “we have peace with God” (5:1). This is not talking about something so
easily deceived and so deceptive as our emotions. Simply because we become
Christians is no guarantee of perpetual inner tranquility. We may not feel laid-back or
cool, calm, and collected at all times. But the fact remains “we have peace with God.”
We are no longer his enemies. By faith, we have accepted the terms of peace and are
no longer at odds with God.

The same is true of the promise found in Romans 8:1—“There is . . . no condemnation

for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is no assurance that we will never feel guilty.
It is a reminder that God no longer holds us responsible for our past sins. We are not
condemned by God no matter what our emotions may tell us.

Just so, “peace with God” is not about subjective feelings, but about the objective
reality: We are no longer God’s enemies, but his friends (5:9-11)! This is the point of
Paul’s discussion of “reconciliation” in verses 9-11 of our text.

Like justification, the transformation of the secular notion of reconciliation into a

technical theological term has complicated its understanding for many. Reconciliation
in everyday life is about restored relationships. It is another way of talking about the
benefits of “peace with God.”

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God’s amazing love has put an end to our excuses. It has captured us in its embrace.
It has reconciled us to our Creator. It has freed us from our crippling fear of
impending death. It has restored our true sight. It has given us boldness to approach
God, assured that we are safe in his care. “Peace with God” is the first consequence of
justification. Thus, justification and reconciliation and regeneration—the new birth—
are indistinguishable in Christian experience.

Our new, reconciled relationship with God is the basis for renewed relationships on the
human level as well. Wherever there are relationships involving fallen human beings,
there will always be the need for reconciliation.

The root cause of it all is sin and a broken relationship with God. “All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” And the solution is in
the saving death of the Suffering Servant. “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us
all” (Isa 53:6, RSV).

Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we find ourselves in rebellion against our Creator.
We try in vain to pin the responsibility for our problems on God. But God goes on
loving his creation, even though he is the injured party. He takes the initiative to bring
reconciliation. At incalculable personal expense, he seeks to reconcile his wayward
children to himself and to one another. Reconciliation is not just for me, it is for us.
God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, . . . has given us the ministry of
reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not
counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of
reconciliation to us (2 Cor 5:18-19, NRSV).

Grace: The second consequence of our justification is this: Christ “has brought us by
faith into this experience of God’s grace, in which we now live” (Rom 5:2). God’s
“grace” is not indulgence. It is not simply that God overlooks our shortcomings and
dotes over us like a permissive, cosmic Grandpa. It is true that God loves us enough
to accept us just as we are—sin and all. But he loves us too much to leave us as we
are—wallowing in our sin.

Grace is not simply about forgiveness for our old life. It is about our new life after
forgiveness. This is “standing grace.” We live in the ongoing experience of grace.
Grace is not the doorway into the Christian room; it is the room in which we live and
breathe.

This is not to suggest, as some misguided Christians would have us think, that when
we are converted, God forgives all our sins—past, present, and future. This perverts
grace into a license to sin.

The grace the Bible talks about is the God-given ability to be and do what we could
never be or do on our own. Grace brings us into the realm of God’s rule. As we choose
to live under his sovereignty, we find ourselves empowered to obey him. We are not
left as God found us. We become new creations. The old is gone; the new has come (2
Cor 5:17).

Hear Paul’s words in Romans 6:

What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God’s grace will
increase? Certainly not! We have died to sin—how then can we go on living in it?
For . . . we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a

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 new life . . . so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin. For when we die, we
are set free from the power of sin. Since we have died with Christ, we believe that
we will also live with him (vv 1-4, 6-7, TEV).

Living in grace does not release us from obedience; it empowers us for obedience. We
must not surrender any part of ourselves “to sin to be used for wicked purposes.
Instead,” we must “give [ourselves] to God, as those who have been brought from
death to life, and surrender [our] whole being to him to be used for righteous
purposes. Sin must not be [our] master; for [we] do not live under law but under
God’s grace” (vv 12-14, TEV).

Hope: Among the consequences of justification are “peace with God” and “this grace
in which we now stand.” The third consequence Paul mentions is “the hope . . . of
sharing God’s glory” (5:2). Before we were put right with God, we “all sinned and
continually fell short of God’s glory” (3:23, author’s translation). Peace and grace not
only care for the failures of our past and the ongoing needs of the present, but also
open up possibilities that did not exist before. A right relationship with God gives us
hope for the future.

Popular notions about “hope” are quite different from the Bible’s teaching. Hope is not
merely optimism about the future. The fact is, as Paul admits, Christians have
troubles. But we can “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces
endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and
hope does not disappoint us” (5:3-5, NRSV).

We are not in heaven yet, but we can rest assured that we “will be saved” from the
wrath of God (v 9).

Despite the empty promises of the prophets of positive thinking, God’s children are
not exempt from suffering in the present. Jesus was not, so we should not expect to
be either. As Paul writes in Romans 8: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—
heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that
we may also share in his glory. . . . Our present sufferings are not worth comparing
with the glory that will be revealed in us” (8:17-18).

Optimism must come to grips with the realities of life. “Fairy tale” weddings
sometimes end as “horror stories”—witness the sad tale of Charles and Diana.
Christian hope is not just another fantasy. It is not wishful thinking. Hope is “faith
oriented to the future.”54 And like faith, hope is no more reliable than the one whose
promises we trust.

Despite a steadily declining percentage of church attendance, despite their half-

hearted responses to the demands of the gospel, recent surveys suggest that nearly
all Americans expect to go to heaven, by and by, when they die. But the Bible does
not offer any basis for such fanciful hopes. Sad to say, as the old African-American
spiritual reminds us, “Ever’body talkin’ ’bout Heaven ain’t goin’ there.”

So, sadder but wiser, cynics ask, “What is to make us think that Christian hope is any
more trustworthy than all the rest of the fairy-tale promises?” Paul’s answer is simple
and to the point. The hope God inspires for a bright future “does not disappoint us, for
God has [already] poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who
is God’s gift to us” (5:5, TEV).

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Christian hope is not just another sweepstakes offer actually designed to entice us to
buy some overpriced magazines or the latest how-to manual. Christian hope for the
future is based on God’s already proven love for us in the past.

We can trust God’s promises because he has already delivered far more than we had
any reason to expect. “For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked . . .
It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person,” much less a sinner (vv
6-7, TEV). “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ
died for us” (v 8, NRSV). “What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is
against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not
also give us all things with him?” (8:31-32, RSV).

Let us rejoice in the marvelous, forever-love God has for us! Let us not forget to thank
God for his love that caused him to die for us. Let us celebrate his free gifts of
justification and reconciliation. No matter what wrongs we may have done, undying
love has made us right with God. No matter how far away we wandered from God,
self-sacrificing love has made us his friends. We have peace with God! No matter how
weak we feel, we can rest assured that his resources are more than sufficient to our
need. We stand in grace! No matter how dark the present may seem, he has given us
promises that will not let us down. We have hope!

It may seem too good to be true—a fantastic fairy tale. But it’s true: God loves you!
It’s not a ploy. God is not after anything but your friendship. He does not love you, so
that . . . He does not love you if . . . He just loves you. His love is unconditional. There
is nothing you can do to make him love you more. There is nothing you can do to
make him love you less. He simply loves you.

So let us rejoice in our hope! Let us rejoice despite our troubles. And let us rejoice
because we have been reconciled to God. And let us rejoice that nothing—“neither
death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any
powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vv 38-39).

Though God has made peace, grace, and hope possible, many continue to live as
God’s enemies. Though God offers life, many exist in death. Many are satisfied with
less when they could have “much more” (see 5:9, 10, 15, 17). The Good News is that
God’s grace is stronger than sin. Hope is stronger than despair. And life is mightier
than death. The obedience of Christ is greater than the trespass of Adam. Faith is
more decisive than fate.

Paul analyzes the human problem as alienation. Humans live as aliens in the universe
created to be their home. They are lost. Because of human sin, men and women—all
of us—have made ourselves enemies of God. We are estranged from our Creator. As
such, we have cut ourselves off from the life of God. Our existence is marked by
death. But God, the injured party, has taken the first move to make things right.
Why? In a word—love.

For Paul God’s “love” was not an emotion but covenant faithfulness. God proved his
love by the Gift of His only Son. What love! The remarkable character of his love is
also shown by the unworthy character of its recipients (v 7). God loves sinners. The
uncommon character of God’s love is also shown in that, he spared no expense in the
gift he gave (v 8). God gave Christ to die for us sinners.

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The Gift is for all. But only those of us who by faith receive God’s gracious Gift enjoy
its blessings. “We have now been justified” (v 9). We now enjoy a right relationship
with God. We may know the present reality of forgiveness (see 4:7). Already, we have
been reconciled to God. Once at odds, we are now God’s friends (v 10). Though we
enjoy God’s gift freely (see 3:24), it was at great cost to Him. For it is by the blood of
Christ—His life-giving death—that God makes things right (vv 9-10).

God’s proven love can be trusted. What God has done in the past assures us that our
future is bright. The hope He has placed within us will not let us down (v 5). We will
be spared in the coming judgment—the future day of God’s wrath (v 9; see 2:5; 1
Thess 1:10; 5:9). We will be saved (Rom 5:10). God gave a gift that keeps on giving.
We have hope for the future (vv 1-5) because we have His help in the present.

The gift of love is intimately tied to the events of salvation history. The Crucifixion is
not only the supreme proof of God’s love but alsot makes salvation possible. The
Second Coming will bring salvation to completion. Believers for the time being
continue to live in a fallen, sinful world. But we are already citizens of heaven. We live
between the times.

For the present salvation consists in a restored personal relationship with God.
Reconciliation is experienced as Eden-like friendship with our rightful Lord. It is the
experience of being loved by our Creator. All this is possible only through Christ, who
tore down the barrier between us and God that our sin had erected. Joy is the
experience of the gift of His wonderful love.

How is it that we may be changed from God’s enemies to His friends? How is it that
the death of Christ provides salvation? Paul’s answer simply put is just this: “Christ
got us out of the mess Adam got us into. What Adam did, Christ undid; where Adam
failed, Christ succeeded.”55

The Curse of Death and the Gift of Life (5:12-17). At an airport, the plane you
board will inescapably determine the destination you reach. Where you begin decides
where you will end up. This is just as true of our fate as human beings. But here our
choices are not between a dozen terminals, scores of airlines, and thousands of
destinations. Our choice is not between competing religions or denominational labels.
According to the apostle Paul, our choices are two: “Belong to the humanity whose
destination is determined by Adam or belong to the humanity whose destination is
determined by Christ.”56

Romans 5:12-21 has long been misunderstood as an explanation of how it is that all
human beings are sinners. Certainly, the passage affirms that all people are sinners,
but it nowhere explains how. In fact, the passage has a very different purpose. It
presents the contrastive resemblance between Adam and Christ in order to explain
how God frees people from the problem of sin and the curse of death it brought in its
wake. The passage is not concerned to explain the origin of sin, but to explain the
origin of the new life of obedience. Verses 12-14 prepare for this by contrasting death
as the consequence of Adam’s condemning act with life as the consequence of Christ’s
justifying act.

We have no choice as to whether we will be a part of humanity. Our choice is

restricted to which of the two humanities we will join, which of the two heads we will
follow. That choice determines everything else. Adam’s disobedience brought the
reality of sin into the world. Adam is our common ancestor. He represents the whole

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of humanity. And he represented us poorly. Because Adam sinned, sin was in the
world from the beginning. With sin came death. Death became a part of the
experience of the entire human race, not because Adam sinned, but “because all
sinned” (v 12). Humans repeat the sin of their ancestor Adam. Paul will shortly
emphasize that heredity need not decide our destiny. There is a way out. But it is not
the way of Law.

Law is not a solution to the problem of sin. Law serves the positive function of making
people conscious of sin (see 3:20). What Adam did is not counteracted by the Law,
but by Jesus Christ. The Law identifies sin as sin, but it is powerless to set people free
from its deadly grip. Only Christ, God’s gracious Gift to humankind, sets people free
from the power of sin and the curse of death.

But if Law is not the solution of the sin problem, neither is it its cause. Sin was a
reality even before the coming of the Law. Apart from the Law it operated like an
invisible, poisonous gas. What was the evidence of sin’s pervasive presence in the
world before Moses gave the Law? People died. They died even though they did not
sin in the same way Adam did. He disobeyed a specific command, “You must not eat
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:17). Apart from Law, sin did
not exist as trespass, but it obviously did exist as a death-dealing power.

Let us return to the analogy of the airport. Adam and Christ are both pilots of a plane
of human destiny. Their courses are set in opposite directions. Law paints a skull and
crossbones label on the plane piloted by Adam. It stations monitors throughout the
airport identifying the destination of Adam’s airline as “Death.” But Law is not the
plane to Life (see Rom 7:7-12). It is even unable to rebook doomed humanity on the
flight to “Life.” Apart from Christ our course is set on death.

Though opposite in the consequences of their acts, Adam and Christ are also alike
(5:14). Each is the head of a human family. Adam is the founder of a family doomed
to death; Christ, of a family destined to life. Because Adam sinned, death became our
ruler. But grace overflows the boundaries drawn by sin (v 16).

The one sin of Adam brought the sentence of death to all his descendants. In Adam
we live under the curse of divine condemnation. But the free gift of God, despite the
many sins of Adam’s children, is justification. In Christ we are acquitted. We are freed
from death’s oppressive reign, to share in the “reign in life” through Christ (v 17,
RSV). Our lord determines our destiny just as our pilot determines our destination.

The Cure of Death Through Christ (5:18-21). God’s verdict of guilty because of
the first Adam’s disobedience is overturned by the obedience of the last Adam (see 1
Cor 15:45). The first man did wrong. As a result all human beings are sentenced to
death. The last man did right. As a result all human beings are put right with God and
given the gift of life (Rom 5:18). Is the work of Christ as all-inclusive as the work of
Adam? Is salvation in Christ as universal as condemnation in Adam? Paul seems to say
yes!

Does this imply that since the time of Christ all people are saved without respect to
their response of faith in God’s offer? Paul’s answer, explicit throughout his letters, is
clearly no. Faith is essential. Perhaps this explains why he writes in verse 19b that
through Christ’s obedience “the many will be made righteous.”

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But if we concede this point, honesty compels us to grant another. He also says that
“through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (v 19b). Are
all human beings made sinners solely by the disobedience of Adam without respect to
their own rebellion against God? Paul’s answer again seems to be no. All people are
sinners and subject to death, “because all sinned” (v 12). Because of Christ, heredity
need not be our destiny. We may choose to continue to live in Adam and die. Or we
may choose to live in Christ and truly live.

The freedom to choose the part of the human family to which we will belong is not
natural. It is a benefit of God’s overflowing grace. Law did not solve the lethal problem
of sin. God in Christ did. Law only made sins evident. The introduction of Law resulted
in an overflowing abundance of sin. But God’s superabundance of grace far surpassed
the stain of sin. Grace dethroned the sinister monarch Death and enthroned Life in its
place.

Let us return again to the analogy of the airport. Christ is not only the pilot of the
plane bound for salvation but also our travel agent. He will cancel our tickets on the
plane of Death and rebook us on the plane of Life. There is no cost to us for this
service, although it cost him dearly. All we need do is accept the ticket. That’s faith for
you literalists!

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